Written in April 2012 reflecting four years back and seeing more clearly how pieces of a giant puzzle fit together and what I would have written to myself then……..

34, rue Madame

75006 Paris

29 July, 2008

Is there a way to harness all one’s thoughts that are meant to become real writing into one neat and tidy place? Or is writing supposed to be messy? I think that is what Anne Lamott says. It should be messy.

On that note, I am seated at the desk in our current apartment in Paris, apartment number two that is, on rue Madame, two steps from St. Sulpice, one block from rue Bonaparte and a mere few blocks from blvd. St. Germain. One piece of luggage contains everything I need, or want, and the rest is packed back up and tucked away, once again, in storage where it is has resided for more time than not since we have been married. It should feel orderly around here, but in my head it is anything but that. We’ve made fourteen moves since 1999 and four of those were on an international level. We’d be considered professionals at this by some. A move on any level requires intense organization combined with an ability to start all over. From scratch. Particularly when it is in a new city or new country. Or a new city within a new country.

We are here on rue Madame for now. But even this is a temporary home base while I am on a mission is to find the next “home” in Paris, since this is where my honey will now be working. It feels like we have been in constant movement, although it has all been by choice, so I would never complain. I am just overly aware of how much energy it takes to create home so many times over.

The stuff, there is little attachment to all of it. Without a doubt we feel most alive when we are slightly out of our comfort zone, are discovering new places, new people, new countries, new customs, new cities, and new arrondisements in this case.

My deep belief is that small is beautiful and less is more. Paris apartments, and namely this one at this time falls into that category. But when Paris is your playground, the size of one’s home diminishes greatly. To name the streets that surround us now brings me back to the familiar routes I used to take as a university student at the Sorbonne Paris IV and l’Institute Catholique on rue d’Assas. Rue Bonaparte, rue Vaugirard, rue Cassette, rue de Mézières, rue H. Chevalier, rue d’Assas, rue de Vieux Colombier, Rue Saint Sulpice, rue de Sèvres, rue du Dragon, rue du Quatre Vents, rue du Cherche Midi, Blvd St. Germain, and rue de Tournon to name just a few.

These specific streets are all part of a dream. A dream whose seeds were planted some twenty odd years ago. Actually, it would have been in the 1970s when my mother, a Eurasian beauty, went to Europe to contemplate her life at the time. Europe. That was it. There was something so elegant and refined about the mere word Europe.

It remained a part of my mental and visual world ever since. It was the source of the dream, but I did not know it at the time. All of the details make so much more sense now. My mother used to tell me just keep doing what was interesting and feels right, and even if it does not all make sense, or fit together, because it eventually it will.

In the more recent past, after moving back to the Bay Area from Italy in 2005, I could not resist working with the 20,000 photographs that I’d taken while living in Italy and France. After having tasted life in these two countries, and as more than just travelers, it was in me. Europe had become our world for close to two years and I needed to keep it alive. Visually. Daily. When you’ve had a taste of something so delicious, so satisfying, so soul-stirring, it’s hard to let it go.

So while we were back in the San Francisco Bay Area, I kept the dream alive by doing what my mother suggested, even if it did not make sense. When I was not working, I cataloged, organized, filed & rated those photos the best I could. And while doing so, I was transported back to each memory that was imprinted both in my mind from each experience. Each one was illuminated as if it had just happened. Whatever the photo was, I could feel the air on my skin, I could smell the aroma, I could feel the emotion, I could taste the sweetness and I could breath in the season, the energy and the place. Everything came back to life in a mere image.

There was a need to keep this all alive, for if its pulse weakened, then the dream would die. And if the dream died, then what would happen to the dreamer? But that was out of the question, and having faith in the universe eventually led to the door. There is always a door, and they invariably open. The important thing is to recognize them when they open and not to have fear in walking right through them. We were always willing to go into the unknown, and it seemed that in doing so the prize was feeling truly conscious and experiencing pure joy.

It’s a curious thing to ask oneself why they might be so pulled in one direction in life. Sometimes it is to a person. Sometimes to the wrong person. If we are lucky, to the right person. Sometimes it is to a place. A familiar place. Sometimes it is back home, to the place we grew up and spent our childhood. Sometime it is to nature and the calm of the country. Sometimes it is to the energy, culture and vibration of the city. And sometimes it is a pull overseas to a foreign country.

What things, people, places, words, images created this thing, this thing that makes us become, who we are, and make us become what we create? This is so difficult to answer.

But when there is a draw, a pull, a tugging, one can only resist for so long. If we get to experience many lives, then tant mieux, or all the better, but as far as I know, we get to live in this one body once around, and it feels better to make the best of it than to settle for safe. So, the draw. It is to feel like your body and heart are in the same place together. And that place where your heart is? It is probably going to be a good place to spend your life, because it feels better to have one’s heart and body connected, and in the end, this is not a dress rehearsal.

To be continued…

Letters from Paris